Sr. Rios provides good work, but the consumer should ask about specifics before the Spaniard takes to task. In fact, get it in writing. House of Ulysses isn't novel at all. There is a single flourish where Rios upends the Nausicaa episode and conveys the images from a reverse angle. Otherwise the tome is an analysis of Joyce's novel, overflowing with puns and free associations. While amusing, House of Ulysses isn't really an object of focus.
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Is it a novel? It doesn't matter: it's a lot of fun for Joyce readers -- familiarity with, at least a reading of, his Ulysses necessary. In case that occurred some time ago, The Man with the Mac(intosh computer) is on hand, nerdishly silent but pulling up the schemata of the book as we enter each room/chapter.

But it's not an analysis of Ulysses and those who consider themselves deeply into that magnificent work of Joyce's shouldn't expect to get new ideas for or against any views they may hold -- not directly, at any rate. Rather, The House of Ulysses is an appreciation of, a homage to, Joyce's last fairly narrative work (the narrative in Finnegans Wake is surely not fair), along with an appreciation and perhaps even a homage also to the tremendous variety of readers who each find his or her own interest and pleasure in the work.

The house of Ulysses through which this books takes us is something like a museum, but with nothing, no objects, in any of the rooms (one for each chapter plus entrance and exit areas), which might be an indication of what Julian Rios expects of his readers, and which satisfies the readers on the tour represented in the work itself.

That Rios's first language isn't English and that The House of Ulysses is translated (invisibly) from Spanish, beautifully testifies to the universal appeal of the work whose house we're visiting. But most of all, one can only repeat that it's a lot of fun -- relax and enjoy it -- it's a lovely Joycean Ulysses Museyroom: mind your head going in! ( )

Julian Rios's newly translated 'The house of Ulysses' is a novel about a novel. The targeted novel being James Joyce's landmark 20th century fictional masterpiece Ulysses. Rios's book is almost as clever as the original--with fictitious critics arguing over the movement of Joyce's book as they go from chapter to chapter--laying down insight after insight into how Joyce developed his work from Homer's Odyssey and other pertinent details about other sources Joyce used and of course how Joyce's native city of Dublin Ireland juxtaposes from Homer's odyssey into one day in the lives of Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom. This is a fun and very witty joy to read especially if you're a Joyce fan. And if you are you shouldn't pass this up. ( )